New-old rivalries, startling product entrances and exits, six-figure pricing: What gives?
Time Magazine: World’s Greatest Places
My hometown of Detroit is experiencing a long-promised (if uneven) renaissance, so I managed to get it, and a cool new art-focused redevelopment project on the city’s East Side, included in Time magazine’s list of the World’s Greatest Places to Visit, for 2025.
Strut Your Stuff
Up next in my ongoing series about boutique shops that repair impossible-to-find parts for beloved vintage vehicles is this dispatch from Northern California. Andrew Villaseñor runs Andrew’s Mercedes Service, and rebuilds the self-leveling rear struts for the otherwise indefatigable 1970s-1980s Mercedes W123 Wagons.
Click on the thumbnail above, then click again, to view a crappy scan. Or just subscribe to the magazine already, you Chintzy Bltch.
The Best Car Documentary of 2025
One night, legally blind neurodivergent Milwaukee used car salesman TW Hansen drunkenly decided to purchase a janky 1989 Ford E350 ambulance using his boss’s money. All manner of lunacy–car wrecks, car fires, cars dropped from cranes, cars driven off cliffs, cars towed around town by fenderless vans–ensues. As does one of the most heartwarming documentaries we’ve recently seen.
Imbuing Personality in Self-Driving Cars
How Porsche, Volvo and Rivian Are Injecting Unique Driving Styles Into Self-Driving Cars
Mercedes Joins the Sinking Miami Luxury Tower Market
Will the new Benz-branded Mercedes Places Miami tower succeed? Or, will it literally sink into the sand, like recent proximal towers by Porsche and Bentley? And, since it’s being built in association with a developer with innumerable legal woes, will it sink the brand’s reputation as well?
Range Extender
As the shift to fully electric vehicles morphs, how are luxury automakers extending the life cycle of their gas-powered offerings?
Are Toasted Teslas Toxic?
“The smoke from burning buildings and cars is much more toxic than burning wood,” says Anthony Wexler, director of the Air Quality Research Center at the University of California, Davis.
CLICK, and SCROLL DOWN below this story on vile MAGA actors to read my investigative piece on how roasted EVs are creating additional challenges in containing the horrifying LA fires.
The Easiest Cars to Get In and Out Of
Are you getting old, like me, with creaky joints and painful nerve damage? It may be time to switch out of that vintage Lamborghini and into something with simpler means of ingress and egress. And, don’t worry, they’re not all bland crossovers and SUVs!
Retro vs Modern
At the turn of the 21st century, automotive design presented two distinct approaches for proceeding into the new millennium: one backwards looking, one controversially faceted. Did either win? Did we?
Click on the thumbnails above, then click again, to read a crappy scan. Or click on this link to read the online version. Or, better yet, just subscribe to the magazine already, you Chintzy Bltch.